, 1887-09-04
WASHINGTON IRVING.
Haunts and Homes of the Genial
American Writer.

ability that his life work stands in as high
relief against the background OF easy and
eventless circumstance as many another
has done with all the peculiar advantage
of a setting whose deep shadows of adver-
sity have displayed the light of genius to
its highest and best. To this fortunate
condition it is not unfair to attribute in a
great measure the glad, free, spontaneous
quality which is the chief and enduring
charm of the works of Washington Irv-
ing.
He viewed man and nature with the
care. free, unbiased interest of a favorite
of circumstance; the voluntary, unham-
pered speculation and analysis of a stu
dent and the easy and cultured grace of
a well to do gentleman. Reveling through
his boyhood to early manhood among the
enchanted glades of Southeastern New
York and Southwestern New England,
and
AMONG THE wITCHING SCENES
along the lower Hudson. he reached out,
not as one with the savage instinct of
nature finding its own like Thoreau, but,
as one ever in the sunlight of moderate
prosperity, and took unto himself and
enjoyed all that is bright and sweet in
God 8 gifts to man, without e~ncounterlng
the hurts behind and between. His very
SORROWS were only such as are the natural
or inevitable Inheritance OF all men-the
loss by death of his parents, ten years
apart, and Of his sweetheart, Matilda.
The latter event may or may not ave de-
termined his bachelorhood. However
that may be, 1t is certain that his seventy
SIX years were fun of that calm content
and honored prosperity which permit the
molding of the man by the choicest hui
man virtues and influences.
Irving wandered through many lands
and entered into companionship with
many peoples, striking, as may all true
men and women, some familiar,
MUTUAL HARMONIOUS CHORD
with each; basking in the rich or pecu-
liar locale and characteristic of each. But
he was able to say in his account of HIM
self: Never need an American look be-
yond his own country for the sublime and
beautiful OF natural scenery" In that
sentence may be found open windows to
the ultimate horizon beyond tho warm
and glowing scenery of fact and thought
from which his good and true work took
its most loving coloring. To him, his W
country represented nature and the works
OF God; Europe, man and the works of
man. When writing upon the beauties
OF his W land, the ~personages he placed
amongst them were almost without ex-
ception creatures of his own fancy-save
that he caught and presented the quaint
flavor Of the early Dutch settlements
along the Hudson in his most ~fanciful
creation. When writing of lands beyond
the sea, he embodied man as he there
found him. So, though animated by the
longing to tread in the footsteps of an
tiquity y Y y n to wander over the
scenes of renowned achievement"
TO SEEK IN ALL LANDS
To escape from the commonplace real
tiles of the present, and lose himself
among the shadowy %grandeurs of the
past his life home and hearthside were
of his boyhood, at this sweet old place,
Tarrytown, where he purchased in 1885,
on his return from Europe, ten acres of
lane and a ~century-old cottage, which he
Enthusiastically ~remodelled, naming it Sunny
Side and where, with the exception OF
his five years embassadorship ct Madrid,
WI AOtl w lCtOs duu OCCdblOudl bdlllCS
into his own broad land, he passed the re
mainder of his life. He here completed
many of his writings on foreign topic and
scene already begun or in mind at the
time of his retreat to Sunny Side; but
whatever the subject, every one took on
touch OF geniality and blithesomeness,
tenderness and pathos, dignity and power
out of the exhaustless wealth of incident,
scene and imagery unconsciously stored
with the ripper powers from the old haunts
of youth tide, and forever renewed
through the home building among them.
Within the past two years in my wan.
derings | have been drawn again and
again to the fact that, as impressive as
was this
NOBLE WRITER'S FAME,
no avenue had been left open along which
the admirer of his writings might stroll il
loving meditation and revery until the
inner places he knew were found and en-,
joyed, as if in his own goodly company
There is Irving biography. memoir anC
memorial by the ton. But in it all tina
which is not devoted to a~ssociating tn,
writers themselves with a great name, fill
the readers mind with chronicles o
marked strides to fame in the days of Irv
ing 5 career when great accomplishment il
unimpressive; or with dates Of this or o
that, from which one turns with intens,
hunger for truth of the real man. Con,
temptation of the matured and placed
great man, and especially of a grea
writer, after all has little reward. But i
we can, with later knowledge of hi
rounded achievement, come suddenly as i
were upon him in the shirt sleeves perioC
OF his striving, or quietly get apart with
him, or near him, among the thing
which nodded him, there is gained
genial, though silent, companionship.
OF the formulative period of Irving!
life there is scarcely a record. You cal
find that he was born April 3, 1888, a
l3l William street, New York; tina
through the persistence of a Scotch ser
want, Washington, for whom he wa
named, blessed him." that he had mucl
religious precept and little schooling giveI
him; about his law studies under Judg,
Hoffman; of his Jonathan Oldstyle'
contributions to his brother Peters Morn
ing Chronicle; account of his two year
wanderings from 1904 to 1906; OF his re
turn to this country and admission to tn,
= practice Of law, which he never practiced
= and finally ahnnt bio olr;esion 20 ~